Alexander von Kaulbars

Alexander von Kaulbars (23 May 1844-25 January 1925) was a General of the Cavalry of the Imperial Russian Army and one of the founders of the Russian Air Force.

Biography
Alexander von Kaulbars was born in Modders, Estonia, Russian Empire on 23 May 1844 to a family of aristocratic Baltic Germans, and he joined the Imperial Russian Army in 1861 and took part in the suppression of the Polish January Uprising that same year. He was promoted to Colonel in 1872, and he participated in the 1873 conquest of the Khanate of Khiva. Kaulbars went on to fight in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, and he was promoted to Major-General in 1879. In 1882, he became Minister of War of Bulgaria, and fellow Russian general Leonid Sobolev became immensely powerful in the Bulgarian government; Sobolev rose to be Prime Minister. Kaulbars and Sobolev's influence angered Prince Alexander of Battenberg, who failed to expel them; in 1886, the Russians backed a coup against Alexander and overthrew him. Kaulbars was promoted to Lieutenant-General in 1891, and he took part in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion and the Russian occupation of Manchuria. He later held an army command in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War, and he was defeated at the Battle of Mukden. In 1909, he returned to Eastern Europe to command the Odessa Military District. In October 1914, shortly after the start of World War I, Kaulbars became commander of the Russian Air Force. He was dismissed in 1915, and he was later appointed Governor of Odessa in 1916. In 1918, during the Russian Civil War, he became a general in the White Army. After the White defeat in 1919, he went into exile in Bulgaria and France, and he worked for a telegraph company in Paris until his death in 1925.